WEBVTT

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Good evening.

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I shall read poems in English
translation, and some of them,

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for sound sake, in
the Hebrew original.

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The translations have been
made by various translators

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as a good one Harold
Schimmel and Ruth Nevo.

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But the last two books
became a kind of experiment

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in translation.

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I did it together with the
British poet, Ted Hughes.

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And I translated just
straight, almost word by word,

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and then he listened
to the poem in Hebrew.

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And, so, we worked together.

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It was a very nice experiment,
and I think it worked well.

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I would like to
start straight away

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with a poem which may perhaps
prove that poetry in my country

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is very deeply involved and
it's part of the community

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and it's part of political
life and it's part of history

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and it's part of everything.

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It's not limited to
certain groups or campuses.

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But it's right outside there.

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And I think we are very lucky
as poets in Israel to have

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quite a big audience and
much beyond the smallness

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of the country and the
small number of its people.

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"A Song of Peace."

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"My son smells of peace
when I lean over him.

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It isn't just the soap.

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Everybody was once a child
with a smell of peace.

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And in the whole country,
there isn't a single windmill

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which turns or torn country
like torn clothes, which

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can't be mended and hard, lonely
forefathers in [INAUDIBLE]

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grave in childless silence.

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My son smells of peace.

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His mother's womb
promised him that

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which God can't promise us."

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